U.S. Clears Way for Antitrust Inquiries of Nvidia, Microsoft and OpenAI
美国为对英伟达、微软和 OpenAI 进行反垄断调查铺平道路

Federal regulators have reached a deal that allows them to proceed with antitrust investigations into the dominant roles that Microsoft, OpenAI and Nvidia play in the artificial intelligence industry, in the strongest sign of how regulatory scrutiny into the powerful technology has escalated.
联邦监管机构已达成协议，允许他们继续进行反垄断调查，调查微软、OpenAI 和英伟达在人工智能行业中扮演的主导角色，这是监管机构对强大技术进行审查升级的最明显迹象。

The Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission struck the deal over the past week, and it is expected to be completed in the coming days, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, who were not authorized to speak publicly about the confidential discussions.
司法部和联邦贸易委员会在过去一周达成协议，根据两位知情人士的说法，预计将在未来几天内完成，这两位知情人士未获授权公开讨论机密内容。

Under the arrangement, the Justice Department will take the lead in investigating whether the behavior of Nvidia, the biggest maker of A.I. chips, has violated antitrust laws, the people said. The F.T.C. will play the lead role in examining the conduct of OpenAI, which makes the ChatGPT chatbot, and Microsoft, which has invested $13 billion in OpenAI and made deals with other A.I. companies, the people said.
根据安排，司法部将主导调查英伟达（Nvidia）这家最大的人工智能芯片制造商的行为是否违反了反垄断法，消息人士称。联邦贸易委员会将主导审查 OpenAI 的行为，OpenAI 是 ChatGPT 聊天机器人的制造商，以及微软，后者已向 OpenAI 投资 130 亿美元并与其他人工智能公司达成交易，消息人士称。

The agreement signals intensifying scrutiny by the Justice Department and the F.T.C. into A.I., a rapidly advancing technology that has the potential to upend jobs, information and people’s lives. Both agencies have been at the forefront of the Biden administration’s efforts to rein in the power of the biggest tech companies. After a similar deal in 2019, the government investigated Google, Apple, Amazon and Meta and has since sued each of them on claims that they violated antimonopoly laws.
协议表明司法部和联邦贸易委员会对人工智能的审查日益加剧，人工智能是一项快速发展的技术，有可能颠覆就业、信息和人们的生活。这两个机构一直处于拜登政府努力遏制最大科技公司权力的前沿。在 2019 年类似的协议之后，政府调查了谷歌、苹果、亚马逊和 Meta，并随后对它们每家提起诉讼，称它们违反了反垄断法。

For months, Nvidia, Microsoft and OpenAI largely escaped the brunt of the Biden administration’s regulatory scrutiny. But that began to change as generative A.I., which can produce humanlike text, photos, videos and audio, burst onto the scene in late 2022 and created an industry frenzy.
数月来，英伟达、微软和 OpenAI 在拜登政府的监管审查中基本上幸免于难。但随着生成式人工智能在 2022 年底突然出现并引发了行业狂潮，情况开始发生变化。

Regulators have recently signaled that they want to get ahead of developments in A.I. In July, the F.T.C. opened an investigation into whether OpenAI had harmed consumers through its collection of data. In January, the F.T.C. also started a broad inquiry into strategic partnerships between tech giants and A.I. start-ups, including Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI and Google’s and Amazon’s investments in Anthropic, another young A.I. company.
监管机构最近表示，他们希望在人工智能发展之前采取行动。 7 月，FTC 展开了一项调查，以确定 OpenAI 是否通过其数据收集损害了消费者。 1 月，FTC 还开始对科技巨头与人工智能初创公司之间的战略合作进行广泛调查，包括微软对 OpenAI 的投资以及谷歌和亚马逊对 Anthropic 的投资。

Still, the United States lags behind Europe in regulating artificial intelligence. European Union officials agreed last year on landmark rules to govern the fast-evolving technology, focused on the riskiest ways in which it can be used. In Washington last month, a group of senators released legislative recommendations for A.I., calling for $32 billion in annual spending to propel American leadership of the technology but holding off on asking for specific new regulations.
尽管如此，美国在监管人工智能方面仍落后于欧洲。欧盟官员去年就监管快速发展的技术达成了里程碑式的协议，重点关注了人工智能可能被使用的最危险方式。上个月在华盛顿，一群参议员发布了人工智能立法建议，呼吁每年投入 320 亿美元以推动美国在该技术领域的领导地位，但暂时不要求制定具体的新规定。

The discussions between the F.T.C. and Justice Department over the A.I. companies entered their final stages within the last week and involved the senior levels of both agencies, said one person with knowledge of the discussions, who is an F.T.C. official.
F.T.C.和司法部关于人工智能公司的讨论在上周进入最后阶段，并涉及两个机构的高级别人员，一位了解讨论情况的 F.T.C.官员表示。

Lina Khan, the chair of the F.T.C., said in a February interview that when it came to A.I., the agency was trying to spot “potential problems at the inception rather than years and years and years later, when problems are deeply baked in and much more difficult to rectify.”
FTC 主席莉娜·汗在二月的一次采访中表示，对于人工智能，该机构正在努力在最初阶段发现“潜在问题”，而不是在很多年之后，当问题已经根深蒂固且更难以纠正时。

Spokeswomen for the F.T.C. and the Justice Department declined to comment. Nvidia, Microsoft and OpenAI didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
美国联邦贸易委员会和司法部的女发言人拒绝置评。Nvidia、微软和 OpenAI 没有立即回应置评请求。

Nvidia, OpenAI and Microsoft have been in the spotlight as some of the biggest winners of the A.I. boom, which has raised questions about their dominance.
Nvidia、OpenAI 和 Microsoft 作为人工智能繁荣的最大赢家之一备受关注，引发了有关它们主导地位的问题。

Nvidia, a Silicon Valley chipmaker, is the primary provider of graphics processing units, or GPUs, which are components adapted for A.I. tasks like machine learning. After A.I. took off, tech companies raced to get their hands on Nvidia’s GPUs, doubling and tripling its sales. Nvidia’s stock price has soared more than 200 percent over the past year, and the company’s market capitalization exceeded $3 trillion for the first time on Wednesday, surpassing Apple.
英伟达（Nvidia）是硅谷芯片制造商，是图形处理单元（GPU）的主要供应商，这些组件专为人工智能（A.I.）任务如机器学习而设计。在人工智能蓬勃发展后，科技公司争相获取英伟达的 GPU，使其销售额翻倍甚至翻三倍。英伟达的股价在过去一年里飙升超过 200％，公司市值周三首次超过 3 万亿美元，超过了苹果。

Industry players have grown worried about Nvidia’s dominance, two people with knowledge of the concerns said, including how the company’s software locks customers into using its chips, as well as how Nvidia distributes those chips to customers.
行业内部人士对英伟达的主导地位感到担忧，两位知情人士表示，包括公司的软件如何将客户锁定在使用其芯片上，以及英伟达如何向客户分发这些芯片。

Microsoft, the world’s most valuable public tech company, has also become a leading purveyor of artificial intelligence. It owns 49 percent of OpenAI, which vaulted into the public consciousness with the 2022 release of ChatGPT. The chatbot’s ability to respond to questions, generate images and build computer code captivated people and quickly made the start-up one of the most prominent companies in the tech industry.
微软，全球最有价值的上市科技公司，也成为人工智能领域的领先提供商。它拥有 OpenAI 49% 的股份，随着 2022 年发布 ChatGPT，OpenAI 迅速进入公众视野。这款聊天机器人能够回答问题、生成图像和构建计算机代码，吸引了众多人，并迅速使这家初创公司成为科技行业中最重要的公司之一。

Microsoft has woven OpenAI’s technology into its own products. A.I. now generates answers for users of its search engine, Bing, and can help build presentations and documents in PowerPoint and Word. (The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft, claiming copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems.)
微软已将 OpenAI 的技术融入其自身产品中。人工智能现在为其搜索引擎 Bing 的用户生成答案，并可以帮助在 PowerPoint 和 Word 中制作演示文稿和文档。（《纽约时报》起诉 OpenAI 和微软，声称侵犯了与人工智能系统相关的新闻内容的版权。）

Microsoft’s A.I. deals have attracted scrutiny for giving one of the biggest tech companies influence over an emerging technology, while some in the industry have raised questions about whether the deals are structured in a way that allows Microsoft to avoid direct review by regulators.
微软的人工智能交易引起了人们的关注，因为这让这家最大的科技公司对新兴技术产生了影响，而行业内一些人对这些交易是否以一种方式构建提出了质疑，这种方式让微软能够避免监管机构的直接审查。

Microsoft structured its minority stake in OpenAI in part to avoid antitrust scrutiny, The Times has reported. Microsoft also reached a deal in March to hire most of the staff of Inflection AI, another A.I. start-up, and license its technology. Because the deal was not a standard acquisition, it may be harder for regulators to scrutinize.
微软结构化其在 OpenAI 的少数股权部分是为了避免反垄断审查，据《时报》报道。微软还在三月达成协议，聘请了 Inflection AI 大部分员工，并获得了其技术许可。由于这笔交易不是标准收购，监管机构可能会更难进行审查。

Last week, the Justice Department’s antitrust division organized a conference about A.I. at Stanford University. In his opening remarks, Jonathan Kanter, the top antitrust official at the agency, pointed to “structures and trends in A.I. that should give us pause.”
上周，司法部的反垄断部门在斯坦福大学举办了一场关于人工智能的会议。在开场白中，该机构的首席反垄断官乔纳森·坎特指出了“人工智能中应该让我们停下来思考的结构和趋势”。

“A.I. relies on massive amounts of data and computing power, which can give already dominant firms a substantial advantage,” he said.
“人工智能依赖大量数据和计算能力，这可以让已经占据主导地位的公司获得重大优势，”他说。